Miss Manners Quotes

#1. Miss Manners herself, while never rude, is given to pulling a fast pinch in the way of a handshake on those who believe in kissing on, not even the first date, but the first sighting.

Judith Martin

#2. Sometimes I pine for the era of Miss Manners, when there were hard and fast rules dictating a well-bred individual's behaviour in any given situation.

Lynn Coady

#3. It is one of Miss Manners's great discoveries that one needn't contradict others in order to set them straight.

Judith Martin

#4. Miss Manners' meager arsenal consists only of the withering look, the insistent and repeated request, the cold voice, the report up the chain of command and the tilted nose. They generally work.

Judith Martin

#5. Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets.

Judith Martin

#6. Indeed, Miss Manners has come to believe that the basic political division in this country is not between liberals and conservatives but between those who believe that they should have a say in the love lives of strangers and those who do not.

Judith Martin

#7. Whamming someone smaller than oneself in order to teach that person civilized behavior is not within Miss Manners' concept of propriety, much less logic.

Judith Martin

#8. Come on, where did you learn to fight? Miss Manners' School for Girls? My baby sister could hit harder than you when she was three years old. Damn, if you're going to turn Daimon, the least you could do is take a few fighting lessons so you can make my boring job more interesting. (Wulf)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#9. We are an institution of high learning and higher manners. We simply cannot shoot first; it isn't done. Now, remember that, Miss Temminnick, do - a lady never shoots first. She asks questions, then she shoots.

Gail Carriger

#10. I hope I have a little talent, but a lot of it was luck. I went through setbacks. People said I looked too young, people said I wasn't good, nobody said, 'Come here, baby, we're going to make you a star.' Early on, when I'd say, 'Can I do some anchoring?' people would look at me like I was crazy.

Katie Couric

#11. Charlotte Palmer is no sillier than Harriet Smith; and yet, how intolerable we should find it to see and hear as much of Charlotte as we do of Harriet! And would Miss Bates have been endurable if she had been presented in the mood and manners of Sense and Sensibility?

Mary Lascelles

#12. He thought it probable that Miss Brooke liked him, and manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted by preconceptions either confident or distrustful.

George Eliot

#13. Disturbing anything [situation] results in damage. To improve, you do not need to disturb anything that is natural and has turned bad. You need to make way out; you need to find a solution.

Dada Bhagwan

#14. It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.

Judith Martin

#15. It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners.

Mahatma Gandhi

#16. When we realize how great a debt we owe to God, we become willing servants, eager to be poured out for God and His Kingdom.

J.D. Greear

#17. I don't like talking about 'solutions.' I prefer talking about intelligent responses.

James Howard Kunstler

#18. Nobody believes that the man who says, 'Look, lady, you wanted equality,' to explain why he won't give up his seat to a pregnant woman carrying three grocery bags, a briefcase, and a toddler is seized with the symbolism of idealism.

Judith Martin

#19. It would be difficult to define the limits of his reading.

Blanche E.C. Dugdale

#20. A small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the person you are addressing is not invited.

Judith Martin

#21. Women were brought up to have only one set of manners. A woman was either a lady or she wasn't, and we all know what the latter meant. Not even momentary lapses were allowed; there is no female equivalent of the boys-will-be-boys concept.

Judith Martin

#22. She only maintains that it is possible, under some circumstances, for a lady to murder her husband; but that a woman who wears ankle-strap shoes and smokes on the street corner, though she may be a joy to all who know her and have devoted her life to charity, could never qualify as a lady.

Judith Martin

#23. I think the thing I miss most in our age is our manners. It sounds so old-fashioned in a way. But even bad people had good manners in the old days, and manners hold a community together, and manners hold a family together; in a way, they hold the world together.

Nancy Friday

#24. We keep our prices low and our manners high. -Miss Bartocci

Colm Toibin

#25. Remember that people who seek to do evil can play hit and miss all they want. People who are seeking companionship online have to be right every time. Miss out on this one and the price could be very dear, even costing your life.

John Patrick Hickey

#26. Eating grapes with a knife and fork is not what one would call refined. It is what one would call ludicrous.

Judith Martin

#27. It is, indeed, a trial to maintain the virtue of humility when one can't help being right.

Judith Martin

#28. Challenges come our way when we least expect them; our insecurities, desires, balance, & conscience are tested in the process.

April Mae Monterrosa

#29. College women are typically given to declaring for one or the other (in my day, for marriage; now, generally, for careers), and only later finding to their surprise that they must cope with both
while their men may be trying to figure out how to get out of doing both.

Judith Martin